*“The end of January?” Stevie Evans swallowed her tea a little too quickly then gave a small gasp as it nearly went down the wrong pipe.
“Are you okay?” her best friend, Kara Gilroy, asked from the other end of the phone call.
“Fine,” she replied, glad they were not on a video call, so Kara didn’t see her nearly choke at the idea of putting on a wedding in a matter of weeks. “Of course I can put together a wedding by January 30.”
She glanced at the wall calendar she used to record her substitute teaching schedule. Four weeks. She could do it. Nothing she liked better than a skin-of-the-teeth challenge.
“Are you sure?” Kara asked. “Theo and I can do the courthouse thing if it’s—”
“It’s not a problem,” Stevie interrupted. The fact that she’d never taken part in a wedding might slow her down, but she had rarely come up against a matter that she couldn’t solve with the help of a search engine and a little ingenuity. “I’m excited to do it.”
“Thank you.” The words rang with gratitude. “I’m being deployed to the no-communications area in two days, which is why Theo surprised me with the proposal on New Year’s Day. I’ll have to leave everything in your hands except for the invites, which he’s handling.”
“I hope you like neon green,” Stevie said.
“You know it’s my fave,” Kara replied, matching her tone.
Stevie smiled. She missed her friend.
“I don’t want you to go to any major trouble,” Kara continued. “Just something super simple.”
“Do you have a venue in mind?”
Kara hesitated just long enough to give Stevie a bad feeling. “I’d like to get married on the tree farm.”
Stevie’s heart gave a small kick. The tree farm was where Kara’s brother, Brant, spent his weekends. Not that that was a huge issue, except that Brant would be there.
“Not a problem,” she said a little too breezily.
“No. It might be. Brant is taking his vacation days this month. It’s use them, or lose them, so—”
“He’ll be there. Right.” Stevie sucked in a breath. “Honestly, not an issue.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
Like she could say, yes, it’s an issue. Stevie would never do that. In fact, she’d done her best ten years ago to keep secret the blazing argument she and Brant had had shortly after she and Kara had been given a three-day high school suspension. She’d failed in that, but she had managed to hide just how deeply Kara’s older brother had hurt her. A decade had passed, yet memories of that fight still stirred dark emotions. It sucked when a guy you admired told you what he thought of you…and it wasn’t flattering.
“I was a little concerned about you working together.”
Stevie closed her eyes, once again thankful she was not on a video call. Having Brant on the premises was one thing. Working with the guy…that was a totally different thing.
Stevie opened her eyes. “We’ll do just fine. Now, what about the dress?”
“Got it covered. I’ll bring it home with me.”
“Colors?”
“Your choice, but not neon green.”
“Camo.”
Kara laughed. “You’re a lifesaver, Stevie. Theo and I want to get married in front of friends and family, but you know what our schedule is like. I really owe you.”
“You do not,” Stevie said firmly. “I’m honored to do this.”
“In a ridiculously short amount of time,” Kara said. She was being discharged from the military in roughly four weeks, and in six weeks her contractor fiancé was heading overseas to take charge of a multi-year pipeline project. Kara and Theo had managed a long-term relationship for most of Kara’s military career, and now they wanted to get married before Theo headed overseas. It made for a tight window.
“I’ll make it work. No. We’ll make it work, Brant and I,” she amended, thus demonstrating her commitment to cooperating with Kara’s brother. “I assume, given the venue, that you want an outdoor ceremony?”
“Unless there’s a gale force wind, yes. I’ve always wanted a winter wedding, and this will be a great way to kick off Brant’s new venture, if he goes through with it.”
Wait a minute.
“What venture?” Stevie frowned, wondering how, in a town the size of Holly, Idaho, she hadn’t heard of a possible new Gilroy endeavor.
“I told you.”
“You did not.”
“Huh. Guess my mind has been elsewhere,” Kara said with a soft laugh. “He’s been knocking around the idea of using the tree farm as an event venue to bring in some extra money. Weddings and anniversary parties. Things like that. Property taxes keep rising and while the Christmas trees do well, the profit margin is diminishing. This will give him a taste of what he’ll be getting into.”
“I assume that’s in addition to continuing his job in Boise.”
“This is my brother we’re talking about. If you can easily do two tasks, take on three.”
“Brant is driven.” Stevie would give him that, even though she didn’t consider it an entirely positive trait. “It’s a genius idea to expand the tree farm.”
“It was mine,” Kara said. “Don’t let him take a lick of credit.” Muffled voices sounded in the background of the call and then Kara said, “I’ve got to go, Stevie. Thank you again. I’ll be in touch tomorrow.”
“And I’ll get in touch with Brant so that we can start planning on our end.”
“Play nice?” Kara said.
“Of course,” Stevie said. “Talk to you soon.”
She set down the phone and leaned back in her chair, lacing her hands behind her head as she studied the wall calendar. Four weeks. She could do it. And she would do whatever it took to along with Brant Gilroy while they planned and executed this wedding.
What would it take?
A dose of understanding?
Well, she did understand things now that she hadn’t back then. Brant had seemed so cool-headed and in control while acting as both brother and parent to Kara after they’d lost their parents that Stevie hadn’t realized that he’d probably been overwhelmed. Or that he was doing what he thought was best when he hounded Kara to be as focused on the future as he was. The three-day school suspension for the cafeteria Jell-O war had been his tipping point.
Stevie unlaced her fingers and got to her feet, needing to move. The memory always made her uncomfortable, because he’d so obviously meant every scathing word he’d growled at her during their showdown.
Self-centered and without regard for others. Taking Kara down with you—what kind of friend are you?
She’d been the kind of friend who’d tried to distract Kara from grief, but he hadn’t bought into that—probably because she’d been so overwhelmed with the wrongness of his accusations that she’d barely defended herself.
What really stung was that she’d thought he was so wonderful and admirable until the moment he’d blindsided her.
He did not feel that same, and he had no reason to like her any more now than he had back then, but her self-esteem was no longer as fragile as it had once been. In fact, now that she had come to know herself better, it had hardened up nicely.
She could deal.
*
Brant Gilroy pushed his hands deeper into his pockets as he trudged between the rows of Christmas trees on his way back to the barn. The snow was deep after the previous night’s flurry and he was breathing hard, but the exercise felt good after putting in a week of overtime at his job as a software engineer in Boise prior to commencing his vacation.
He was now officially off the clock until the day after his sister’s wedding, a bit of serendipity that allowed him to experiment with the idea of turning the tree farm into an event venue. So far, his research had indicated that, while there was competition in the venue arena, he had a unique situation with the tree farm. This wedding would give him even more data and an idea as to how to proceed.
There was only one rub.
Stevie.
Talk about old mistakes coming back to haunt you. The woman who was going to plan and execute the wedding with him had actively avoided him for years. He’d actually seen her cross the street to dodge him, and now they were supposed to join forces.
Life was funny, but he didn’t feel like laughing. He wanted his sister and Theo to have a great wedding, and he wanted the first event at the tree farm to be a success, which meant that he and Stevie needed to come up with a way to work together. He was halfway back to the house when a truck pulled into the driveway and he slowed his steps, frowning. Stevie was the only woman he knew who drove a pickup with a lumber rack—one of her contractor father’s castoffs—as an everyday vehicle. Apparently, he wasn’t going to have to call her to set up a meeting to discuss the wedding, because she’d taken it upon herself to simply pop in.
Maybe that was a good thing, he decided as he shifted course to the house. The iron gray sky behind the mountains indicated that the next snowstorm was coming in hours ahead of schedule, giving them an excuse to talk fast, and quickly get a feel for where they were before Stevie headed back to town.
Stevie ducked her head against the wind and headed toward the front walk. Apparently, she hadn’t spotted him when she’d driven in, so he called her name. Her back stiffened, then she turned, pasting on a half-hearted smile that made her look like a loan officer about to turn down an applicant.
Brant worked up a smile of his own, but it faded as he walked. She wasn’t going to buy his smile any more than he was buying hers. Neither of them had apologized for the things they’d said the day he’d discovered that Kara’s scholarship was in danger thanks to her and Stevie being suspended from school for a stupid prank—a prank that was out of character for his sister, but not for Stevie.
“Hey,” Stevie called as she strode toward him, her long striped scarf blowing in the wind. Her chestnut brown hair was tucked up under her hat, but wavy strands had worked their way free around her face, giving her a charming windswept look.
“Good to see you,” he said, determined to set a positive tone.
“Likewise,” she replied, her voice just this side of ironic. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by.” Her mouth tipped up in a classic Stevie expression, a unique mixture of charm and challenge.
He gestured toward the house. “I have coffee.”
“Sounds good.” She fell into step with him as they made their way up the long snowy path to the porch, the silence between them growing more intense with each step. Oh yeah. They had some baggage to unpack if they were going to get through this project.
“Why were you in the neighborhood?” he asked.
“One of my Leadership Club kids needed a ride home after working at the food bank, so I dropped her off.”
Stevie did a ton of volunteer work in addition to substitute teaching and filling in at various jobs around town, preferring to work piecemeal rather than commit to a full-time job. He’d once accused her of being too untethered for her own good, and apparently nothing had changed over the past several years—except for the part where it wasn’t up to him to give her feedback as to how she lived her life, particularly when he was having some questions about how he was living his own.
He opened the door and she stepped past him into the kitchen. Stevie started toward the oak chair she’d always used during her visits to the farm when she and Kara had been inseparable, then moved past it and took the place at the end of the rectangular table. If he sat in his usual spot there’d be a good four feet of space between them. Maybe that was a good thing because his nerves were humming, and he fumbled the heavy mug as he pulled it out of the cupboard.
“I assume you’re here for a preliminary wedding planning session.”
“Can’t think of another reason I’d be here,” she stated coolly.
“Right,” he acknowledged as he lifted the coffeepot from the warmer. “I think the best way to handle this is to lay out the responsibilities and then divide them up. You handle your end and I’ll handle mine.”
“I think we should work together.”
Brant sloshed coffee onto the counter and when he met her eyes across the kitchen, he could see that she was serious. “Really?”
“I think, in the name of efficiency,” she repeated evenly, “we should work together.”
Brant set down the coffeepot. “All right.”
“I want to make a beautiful wedding for Kara and things that happened between us in the past shouldn’t interfere.”
Okay. They weren’t going to skirt the issue. He was relieved. Brant ran a hand over the back of his neck. “About that…past thing…”
“Yes. About that,” Stevie replied, smoothly batting the ball into his court.
“I was young and—”
“Trying to control everything in your sphere.”
“Trying to keep my sister on the right path.”
“Which didn’t include hanging with me.”
“It didn’t include you getting her into all kinds of trouble. Not when she had scholarships on the line.”
“For the record,” Stevie said calmly, “we were never involved in trouble trouble. We got into goofy trouble. High school hijinks.”
“You got”—he almost said “Kara,” but caught himself—“kicked out of school.”
“They wanted to stop the Jell-O wars before they became a thing,” she explained. “Mr. Carson always had a heavy hand with discipline. Unless you were a male athlete. Then it was a different story.”
“It was more than the Jell-O wars.” She raised her eyebrows politely, belying the steel in her green gaze, and he went on. “I agree that was a stupid thing to get kicked out of school for, but,” he emphasized the word darkly, “it seemed like the hijinks were escalating.”
“The hijinks were a way to blow off steam and deal with stress. If you recall, your sister under a lot of that during her senior year.”
“Scholarship committees aren’t usually interested in the reason applicants get kicked out of school.”
Stevie’s mouth twisted sideways, as if she found his reasoning lame. It wasn’t. And there was more.
“The closer you two became, the less Kara seemed to focus on the future. She told me very seriously that she wanted to be like you, and Stevie, you made it clear that you were going wherever life took you. That you planned to bounce around before college and discover yourself before enrolling. That was fine, because you had a family and a dad with a solid business. You had a support system. Kara had me, a neglectful aunt, and the receipts of a substandard life insurance policy.” He let out a breath, hating to think about those times. “I was worried.”
“I get that,” she said with sudden sincerity. “But you didn’t come off as worried to seventeen-year-old me. You came off as judgmental. Your words hurt. Calling me self-centered particularly stung because I was doing my best to help Kara through a rough time.”
“I didn’t handle things well. I apologize.” But he had been right about Stevie having a support system while Kara had not. His sister hadn’t had the same luxury of time and choice as Stevie. “I’m done judging.”
“Do you mean out loud, or all together?” she asked, causing an uncomfortable feeling to ease up his spine. Yes, he was still feeling kind of judgmental about her relaxed lifestyle, made possible by the fact that her dad owned rental homes and his own business.
“I don’t think I’m the only guilty party here. You gave as good as you got that evening.”
“You’re right,” she said.
“Uptight. Robotic. Unfeeling.”
She cocked her head to one side, glancing up from her coffee mug. “You remember.”
“Why is it surprising that I remember?”
“Because I didn’t think you gave two hoots about my opinion of you. In fact, you said, ‘I don’t give two hoots as to your opinion of me.’”
“Probably because I actually did.”
She tucked her chin to her chest in a disbelieving gesture, and Brant knew he didn’t want to wade any farther into these waters. Not when he had no idea how it would play out.
“Truce?” he asked.
“As in, no dredging up the past?”
“That would be a first step.”
“Lack of closure is not generally healthy, but I think that for four short weeks, I can manage.”
“Good. We’ll keep the wedding front and center.” He took hold of the coffee cup he’d yet to take a sip from. “You should be aware, however, that I know nothing about planning a wedding.”
“Me, either.”
His gaze shot up. “Weren’t you…” His voice trailed as her expression cooled.
“Engaged? I was. We hadn’t made it to the serious planning stages before I broke things off.”
“Ah.” He removed the figurative foot from his mouth and said, “Then I guess we’d better do some research before hammering out a plan.”
“Laser focused?”
“Is there any other kind?” He was only half kidding.
“I think you are about to find out.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ve never been involved in planning a wedding, but I read a lot and the one thing that I know is that things go wrong. You either roll with it, or you go bridezilla.”
He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest as he regarded her. “The more complete the plan, the less opportunity for bridezilla moments.”
“Agreed,” she said mildly.
“Good.” He had a sneaking suspicion that she was placating him, but before he could ask what she thought would go wrong, a gust of wind hit the house, rattling the windows. He glanced past the curtains. “The storm is early.”
“Yes.” Stevie picked up her cup and took a big swallow. “I planned to look around before I left. I haven’t been here in a while and I want to know what I’m dealing with.” She gave him a mea culpa look. “I mean, what we’re dealing with.”
“I was about to say interesting choice of words for someone who wants to work as a team.”
“I guess we both have to make adjustments,” she said, getting to her feet. She took the cup to the sink, rinsed it, and set it on the drainboard, just as she’d done when she was a regular visitor to the farm. The only thing missing was Kara telling her to hurry up so that they could disappear up into her bedroom or head out the door.
Stevie turned toward him after drying her hands. “I probably still have time to take a quick look.”
Brant pointed to the window where gray storm clouds spread over the treetops to the north. “The weather is moving fast.”
“Afraid of being stranded with me?” she asked.
“Yes.”
The corners of her mouth twitched, but she didn’t smile. “I’ll be fast.”
“There’s no talking you out of this?”
She cocked her head. “Dithering is only going to waste time.”
Brant scraped back his chair. “Let’s go.”
Once they were outside, Stevie led the way to the machine shed while Brant hung back wondering why she was going there of all places. She attempted to roll open the door, which was blocked with snow, then gave up and dragged the man door through the snow until she could slip through sideways. Brant had to yank on the door and pile up more snow before he was able to follow her into the frigidly dark interior.
Stevie was already shooting pictures with her phone, the flash lighting up the walls. “I want some shots to plan decorations. I’ll get dimensions later.”
Brant hadn’t intended to use the machine shed as part of the venue, but if it would speed her on her way, he was open to anything.
“What next?”
“The barn.” She slipped back out the door and Brant followed, closing and latching the heavy wooden slab before jogging across the plowed driveway to catch up. She’d been serious about being fast. Good thing, because the wind was already driving ice crystals into his face as he ducked into the barn where he once again found her photographing, snapping shots at all angles.
“Anything else?” he asked when she finally lowered her phone.
“This will do.” She started toward the door, ducking her head against the wind as she opened it. “When should we meet again?”
“I have an appointment in Holly tomorrow,” he said as he followed her out of the barn.
Snow swirled around them and Stevie tucked a few tendrils of chestnut hair back under her hat. “Let’s meet at my place. We can sketch out a preliminary plan.”
“Sounds good.” He walked with her as far as her truck. “But I don’t feel good about you leaving.”
“The storm is behind me and it’s only four miles to town. I’ll be fine. I wouldn’t have stopped in the first place if I’d known it would blow in so darned fast.”
“Then you’d best get going.”
“Right.” But instead of getting into her car, Stevie handed him her phone. “Put in your number. I’ll text you when I get to Holly.”
He took the phone and did as she asked, shooting a blank text to himself to get her number. “I’ll let you know when I’m done with my appointment tomorrow.” He handed the phone back. “Should be around eleven.”
Stevie nodded and got into her car. Less than a minute later, she was heading down the driveway as snow pelted Brant’s coat from behind. He shook his head as she headed into the corner, the rear end of her truck sliding in the new snow before she corrected it.
Stevie had grown up driving these roads. Chances were that she would beat the storm to town, but he was still worried about her getting there.
Maybe he should have insisted she stay until it blew over.
Right.
Experience had taught him how Stevie dealt with insistences. She did what she wanted to do. Case in point, she and Kara had remained best friends after he’d told her to back off, but…they hadn’t gotten into trouble again.
Not that he knew about anyway.